O'Brien probation case goes to jury

Tuesday

Jul 15, 2014 at 8:02 PMJul 16, 2014 at 8:57 AM

By Andy MetzgerState House News Service

BOSTON -- The defense and prosecution made appeals to fairness and common sense as they ended their arguments in the trial of three former state probation department officials accused of rigging hiring to give jobs to people with political connections.

Former Probation Commissioner John O’Brien and two of his former deputies, Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke III, have pled not guilty to charges they conspired to commit racketeering in connection with allegedly operating a criminal organization within the public safety agency and secretly giving out patronage jobs under the guise of a merit-based personnel policy.

“There is something disturbingly cynical about this prosecution,” O’Brien’s attorney Stellio Sinnis said Tuesday. He said, “You help the people you care about, and there’s nothing revolutionary and nothing criminal about that.”

Prosecutors said the patronage, which is not illegal in of itself, was kept secret even from Robert Mulligan, the chief justice of administration and management who signed off on the hires.

“That’s not patronage. That’s fraud, and it’s bribery,” prosecutor Karin Bell said. She said, “Fraud and bribery are not business as usual in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

Bell said O’Brien “gave” jobs to his ally Rep. Robert DeLeo for DeLeo to give to members of the House so they could distribute them to supporters in a bid to help DeLeo in his ultimately successful bid for the speakership.

Sinnis said if DeLeo had taken a bribe he would have been part of the trial, and said, “They’re not here because they didn’t do anything wrong and neither did Mr. O’Brien.”

In a closing statement that seemed mainly geared toward minimizing the role of Tavares in the alleged scheme, attorney Brad Bailey decried allegations prosecutors made “about people not here to defend themselves.”

“When they do that, what does that tell you about the integrity of their case against the three people who are here?” Bailey asked.

“The United States Attorney could not indict me or any other elected official because there was no evidence to warrant an indictment,” DeLeo said in a statement Tuesday. He said, “In my campaign for Speaker, I never traded jobs for votes and no one could honestly have testified otherwise.”

Sinnis argued the jury cannot convict because prosecutors never gave evidence about the many people who did not receive jobs because purportedly less qualified people were allegedly fraudulently hired.

“They’re asking you to convict Liz, Billy and Jack because they hired qualified people,” Sinnis said, noting that the defendants received “not one penny” according to the prosecution’s case. He said “You cannot answer who the most qualified people are,” and said determining the best candidate is a subjective analysis.

“Is Tom Brady the best quarterback in the NFL…?” Sinnis asked. He said, “Sports are driven by statistics and yet no one can agree who the best person is.”

In a rebuttal, prosecutor Robert Fisher said people who weren’t plugged in to a politician didn’t even stand a chance at receiving a probation job.

“Who would really want to send an application into probation with these three at the helm?” asked prosecutor Robert Fisher. He said, “There was no one who got a fair shake unless they had a sponsor.”

Sinnis also argued that Mulligan was well aware of what was happening, which means no fraud occurred, and said Mulligan made the same kind of patronage hires.

“Judge Mulligan’s actions and his words tell you that he knew exactly what was going on,” said Sinnis, who said the notion O’Brien falsely certified that his appointments were made in accordance with the Trial Court manual is meaningless. He said, “No one looked at this manual, ladies and gentleman. This is the biggest farce.”

Burke’s attorney John Amabile said there was nearly no evidence about his client and said patronage hiring has been a longstanding practice in the court system, and one that Mulligan knew about.

“Mulligan was well aware of what was going on here,” Amabile said. He said, “It means there is no fraud. No fraud whatsoever.”

“A lot of things that happened in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s don’t happen now,” said Fisher in his rebuttal.

In his fourth statement on the case in less than a week, DeLeo concluded, “The United States Attorney has knowingly mischaracterized legislators’ testimony as being false merely because the facts did not support her case. What is, or at least should be, criminal is impugning the characters of accomplished and honorable public officials who have devoted their lives to public service on the testimony of a single immunized and non-credible witness.”